the only way you'll get 1 mb of cache is with a clawhammer chip (older hotter 130nm core) or a san diego (1mb brother of venice, 90nm e-revision core). both put out more heat than the 90nm winchester, however the venice and san diego may be able to reach high speeds with less voltage to bridge the heat gap. then there's the 90nm turion chips - built for laptops they (apart from one of the 1.8ghz models) have 1mb of cache but they're socket-754 and motherboard compatibility is sketchy at best.

if you're really after that 1mb of cache, i'd wait for san diego chips to arrive (e-rev 3700+ and 4000+ and they'll be expensive). however i don't think the cache will benefit you for most activities, you'd be better off with a 3000+ winchester or venice and overclocking it to 2.3-2.4ghz, which is pretty much guaranteed.

if you're after the most 'uber' chip, it's venice and san diego. if you're after something that'll work well and be low-power, a winchester would be fine and much cheaper (for a while anyway).

There have been some reviews of the venice and san diegos in various forums. 3200+, 3500+ and 3800+ was tested, and I think they pretty much all did 2.8-2.9 GHz on air cooling. There was one review of the 3700+ and it did (only!) 2.7.

The San Diego 3700+ is currently listed on Monarch at $339, which I don't think is terrible at all for the chip. There's a big price jump between those and the next multiplier up, the 400+, which is more like $540 (a good ol' 60% price increase). So if you're looking for 1 meg of cache, the 3700+ might be the sweet spot in terms of price/performance.

OTOH, if you already have a Winnie, it's probably not worth it to upgrade to a rev. E.

The 2.4 GHz, 1 MB cache, multiplier unlocked chip was the FX-53, now replaced by the 4000+, which is identical except for the unlocked multiplier - you can only increase the multiplier on FX branded chips.

1. Is he san diego 90nm ? (i think this is a yes)
2. What particular computing functions does more cache above 512k do better?

I am considering more cache vs more speed. The reason being that in tests past, at least for gaming, the 0.2 ghz increase in speed did better, however, was a fraction better than its 2.2 ghz 1 meg cache counterpart. I figure that .2 less is an easier to cool option. Plus, its cool to say your amd chip has 1 meg cache, I think at least.

2. if it's a short pipeline (AMD is) it's just less clock cycles wasted while the CPU searches for the necessary data, either in RAM, HDD, etc. AFAIK there's no particular function that more cache will help with. Or in the case of the P4s, they actually have 2 MB of L2 cache, but it winds up not being much of a performance gain because the latency is so high. I think AMD's performance rating is pretty accurate for the cache increase, though...3500+ with 512 of cache and 3700+ for same proc with 1 MB. Extra cache may/may not increase TDP, someone more knowledgable will have to chime in on that point...but it might be less heat than a proc clocked 200MHz higher.

Venice performance would pretty similar to s939 cpus with 512kb cache (Winchester), and San Diego performance will be similar to s939 cpus with 1mb cache (Clawhammer). On the charts there are both s754 and s939 models. For example for 3000+ there are:
Athlon 64 3000+ (Winchester, 1800/250, K8T800, DDR 400)
Athlon 64 3000+ (Newcastle, 2000/200, nForce3, DDR 400)

I think (not sure) that the ones with "/250" after the frequency are the s939 cpus and those with "/200" are s754. Clawhammers come in both sockets so be careful.

yeah the 3700 is where im heading. i just realized how cheap it is compared to others and cheaper than the 3800 which would just heat up more really at load (i keep things at load for like 4 hours plus at a time so its a concern for me.)

I saw some tests about L2 cache, can't remember where, sorry.
Anyway, they tested 128 and 256 kB Semprons against 512 and 1024 kB A64, all running at the same speed. The performance difference was very small in general. They mentioned three reasons for this, L1 is 128 kB which is quite big, how the L1 and L2 cache is accessed, and the integrated memory controller.
It all depends on what you want to do with your computer if you really need it. I'd say go for a cheaper CPU and a better mobo instead.

Where did you see the 3700+ test? If it didn't overclock very good then I suspect it's because it's the worst of San Diego (still pretty good though, don't get me wrong ). San Diego reaches higher in MHz and because of that they'll do some binning and and uses the lowest performing CPU's as some 3500+ (with half L2 cache disabled) and 3700+. Pure speculation, of course.

Those cache crippled 3500+ san diegos might be very interesting indeed. The previous cache crippled 3500+ clawhammers clocked great. See this threadThey were saying these were failed fx55 fx53 and 4000+ chips.

Wow, that's impressive, over 3GHz on water!! I'd be happy with the 2722MHz that he originally hit, with some sweet bh-5 RAM running at around 250....I am definitely picking up a 3700+ when they come out.

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